PCI Raid controller recommendations?

[Mpegger]

I'm seriously thinking of making a media server to serve the whole house. I have a spare PC that I can use that sould work perfectly for one, but I'm kinda lost and definetly not in the know when it comes to RAID cards.

I'm trying to keep cost down, but am open to all suggestions. My requirements are:
Must be PCI! The mobo only has that, so no PCI-e, -X, -Y or -Z. :p
Sould support at *least* 4 hard drives for RAID-5. Would very much prefer 8 hard drive support for future expansion without having to purchase another card or use up another PCI slot. SATA instead of PATA would be nice. SATA-II would be much nicer. :)
Dunno how to word this, but sould be as software independent as possible, and have built in XOR. It seems to me that full hardware solutions are less prone to failure then hardware/software cards, but it will be in a system with a P4@2.4G. So if it must have some software functionality, so be it.
Oh and it'll be running on a XP system, so I dont need 'nix support.

So far, the only card that has caught my eye is the Highpoint 464. PCI with 4 IDE channels for 8 drives. But I see alot of mixed "reviews" on its reliabilty which kinda has me worried. I would like to try and stay in the price range of that card, but again, I'm very open to suggestions. Although I gotta say, I highly doubt I'd want to spend more then $300 on a card unless its really, really good. Both in reliability and meeting my requirements.

[Nebulous]

I remember when i was using a RAID card ( before onboard RAID) the Highpoint RocketRaid was the ultimate. Best card out for that time. Not sure if the Quality/Performance is still there.

Another one you can look into is Silicon Image.

These 2 were the ones i used with zero issues. I'm sure the guyz here will chime in on this.

[Jon]

PNY S-CURE. Has all that you're wanting, minus SATA-II (not a big deal as the SATA150 has plenty of bandwidth). The only downside is that NetCell is out of business, so firmware/software support for this card is gone. It's driverless technology, so it's not that big of a deal.

There is a 3 and 5-port version - both do RAID3, which is actually better than RAID5 for serving media (better reads). I have one with 5x500GB on my own media server and it works terrific. I'll probably grab another, just to have a backup (they're cheap enough).

Despite the risk, I believe it to be well worth it.

[Mpegger]

Holy ****! :drool:

I think you hit the nail with this one! :beer:

Seems to be fully hardware AND allows hotswapping of drives! Very, very sweet find!

[Jon]

You can see here how well it scales once larger transfer sizes (file sizes) are used - making it perfect for a media server.

This was run with only 3x500GB Seagates (I leave 2 unplugged since I'm not near capacity yet, so there's no reason to let them spin without reason) in RAID3.

[Mr.Guvernment]

Promise tx4310....


Review

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1976992,00.asp

[Mpegger]

You can see here how well it scales once larger transfer sizes (file sizes) are used - making it perfect for a media server.

This was run with only 3x500GB Seagates (I leave 2 unplugged since I'm not near capacity yet, so there's no reason to let them spin without reason) in RAID3.
How easy is it to add on and expand capacity with this card? I'd like to do the same to save wear and tear on HDs that arent being used, but so many cards seem to be picky about adding in drives and expanding the capacity without having to delete and redo the array.

[Jon]

Just plug in a drive. It automatically detects it and gives you the option of expanding the array or creating a new one. It will then begin the rebuilding process in which it is still completely usable - you can even reboot.

[Mpegger]

Thanks for the recommendation Jon! With the price of the card being so low, I went ahead and purchased 2. In the coming months, I'll be purchasing some 500GB drives (3 at first) and will start on my media server.

One more question, which I'm hopeing you know the answer to. What was the latest BIOS available for the card and software? I've already checked PNYs site, but all they have (that I can find) is the manual in PDF form. The s-cure.com website is gone as well, and all searches on Google just turn up a few sites that mention the PNY S-Cure, or sites that are selling them. I just wanna be sure I have the latest for it before anything about the card is totally unavailable anymore.

One other question. How do you have your media server drives setup? The computer I plan on using already has a small drive in it. I think its a 20GB. More then enough space for the OS and required programs. I was planning on using this drive strictly as the OS/Program drive, and using the array as the media/capture drives. But then I got to thinking that the gain in speed from the Raid 3, with the added security of it, sould mean I would probably be better off running everything, (OS, Programs, swap file and media/capture) from the array and not bother with any other drive. Your thoughts?